There've been some rather amazing noises coming out of what used to be a quiet corner of west London. Two churches - St Mary's, Perivale, and St Barnabas, Ealing - have in recent years sprouted extraordinary programmes of intense music-making, under the artistic direction of retired doctor and passionate pianist Hugh Mather.
With innovative schemes involving big screens for a better view, tickets issued on the door only and a Chopin Festival, which is coming up fast (11-12 May), comprising ten hours of piano music from a plethora of rising stars each playing for 20-30 minutes, it seems that Perivale and Ealing are reaching - with remarkable ease - ideas upon which bigger promoters fear to tread; and, best, making a success of them.
How does Hugh do it? I asked him for a JDCMB Q&A session...
JD:
Hugh, you were a medic and now you're a concert promoter! Please tell us
your own story? How did you get started in the music scene?
HM: I
was a chorister at Westminster Abbey, and played the piano and organ
from an early age, gaining the FRCO diploma while still at school, and
subsequently the ARCM piano performer’s diploma. I then studied
medicine at Cambridge and in London, and was appointed Consultant
Physician at Ealing Hospital in 1982, specialising in diabetes.
However, I always combined medicine with music, and continued to have
piano lessons with the eminent teacher James Gibb, initially at the
Guildhall and then privately, for over 30 years. I gave many concerts
as a solo pianist, including concerti by Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn,
Brahms, Chopin, Grieg, and Schumann, and played Beethoven’s
'Hammerklavier' sonata at the Guildhall and elsewhere. In 1986 I
commenced weekly classical concerts at Ealing Hospital, providing
performing opportunities to musicians living around Ealing, and these
continued for 20 years, with approximately 800 concerts. I retired from
medicine in 2006 and since then I have developed a second career,
promoting about 100 concerts per year - about 600 concerts since 2006 -
at two contrasting Ealing venues, namely St Mary’s, Perivale, and St
Barnabas Church.
JD: Tell us about your two west London venues, St Mary's Perivale and St
Barnabas Ealing - what makes them great places to play and listen to
music?
HM: St Mary’s, Perivale, is a small, 12
th-century Grade 1-listed church hidden away within Ealing Golf
Course, just off Western Avenue in Perivale, near the Hoover Building.
It became redundant in 1973 but is now a flourishing concert venue, run
by a charitable trust, the Friends of St Mary’s Perivale, of which I am
Chairman. It is a stunningly beautiful building with a magical
ambience, and provides the perfect setting for small-scale concerts,
particularly instrumental and chamber music, with a capacity of 70. It
has excellent acoustics, a good piano, and the audience appreciate being
closer to the musicians than in most other venues.
We cultivate a ‘club-like’ informal
atmosphere, with free admission, free drinks and nibbles at the end of
the concert. We hold about 50 concerts per year, most of which are
‘double concerts’ with different musicians performing in each half, as
can be seen from the Archive section of our website (
www.st-marys-perivale.org.uk/events.htm ). This has details of around 320 concerts since 2006, with
performances from over 180 pianists and 100 violinists. The standard of
performance is very high indeed, and is rising year by year. Musicians
love the both the venue and our enthusiastic audience, and are
invariably keen to return.
We have informal links with the Royal
Overseas League, who send their top prizewinners to play, as well as
with the Royal Academy, the Royal College and the Guildhall, so we have a
constant influx of the best new talent. We have excellent in-built
video recording facilities, and produce a high-quality DVD recording of
every performance, which is sent free of charge to all the musicians. We have recently commenced putting some highlights onto our Youtube
channel (
www.youtube.com/user/StMarysPerivale) and so far have uploaded about 60 performances. These amply demonstrate the high calibre of our concerts.
St
Barnabas Church, Pitshanger Lane, Ealing, is a large active
Anglo-Catholic church built in 1916 with a fine choral tradition and a
magnificent, newly-installed pipe organ. I have attended the church as a
parishioner for many years, and in 2007 I bought a very good
Bosendorfer concert grand, previously used by the BBC at the Maida Vale
Studios for broadcasts, from Harrow School. This fine instrument has
been the basis of all our subsequent concerts. The church has a much
larger capacity than St Mary’s Perivale, and is used for Friday
lunchtime recitals and occasional large festivals, such as the
forthcoming Chopin festival. Since 2007 we have had 260 Friday
lunchtime concerts. We have also held eight major festivals devoted to
single composers, listed in
www.barnabites.org/concerts/concertarchive/, and three series of Summer Proms, each with 12 concerts. About 170
pianists, listed in our archive, have played in concerts at St
Barnabas. Concerts are held in the ‘round’, with the piano in the nave
and the audience seated as close as possible.
We have developed a
novel ‘big screen’ system. This was originally acquired for organ
recitals, but is now proving immensely beneficial in piano festivals,
enabling everyone to see each pianist in ‘close-up’. The concerts have been used to raise
funds to pay for the new organ, and to date have raised over
£130,000.
JD: We hear that you don't sell tickets in advance - people just come along
on the night and pay what they like in a retiring collection at the
end. How does that turn out in practice? How do your musicians respond
to this?
HM: We don’t sell tickets in advance, and all concerts
at St Mary’s Perivale are indeed free admission with a retiring
collection. This simplifies the administration of concerts, and
encourages more people to attend. In practice, the amount donated
varies from £1 or less to £20 or more, and averages at about £6-7 per
person. This attracts Gift Aid, raising the total to approximately £8
per person. Our Wednesday concerts at St Mary’s Perivale are ‘double
concerts’ with different musicians in each half, so that we can provide
more performing opportunities and the audience have a more varied and
interesting evening. Soloists usually get paid around £100 for half a
concert, or £200 for a whole recital, depending on the size of the
audience, and we usually give ensembles £50-60 per person. We aim to
give the musicians about 70% of our receipts and to keep 30% to pay our
overheads. All musicians also receive a high-quality DVD of their
performance free of charge.
At
St Barnabas, our Friday lunchtime concerts are also free with a
retiring collection, and we pay our musicians a fixed fee, namely £100
for a soloist, £120 for a duo, £150 for a trio and £200 for a quartet. We do charge a fixed fee for our festivals of £12 per session (afternoon
or evening) (£6 for young people).
JD: Why a Chopin Festival, and why this very unusual format? Please tell us
how it's going to work, why you're doing it and what you hope to
achieve with it?
HM: The Chopin festival repeats the well-tried and successful formula used in previous festivals, as detailed in our archive
www.barnabites.org/concerts/concertarchive/. These have covered all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas (twice), Liszt
piano music, Chopin piano music, Haydn sonatas, the music of Schumann
and Schubert (including chamber music as well), and an organ festival.
The formula really does work brilliantly well in practice. It is
infinitely more interesting and rewarding to hear many different
pianists playing similar repertoire on the same piano, rather than have a
single artist, however good or eminent. We have an inevitable bias
towards piano events because there are so many excellent pianists based
around London who need and deserve performing opportunities.
The St Barnabas Chopin Festival will take place on May 11
th and 12
th
2013 from 2.30-6.00pm and from 7.00-10.00pm on each day. A
flyer with the detail, and full information on the pianists, their
programmes and brief biographical notes, is on
www.barnabites.org/chopinfestival/.
We have 21 pianists, including many prizewinners from international
piano competitions, giving short recitals of 20-30 minutes, including
virtually all the most famous Chopin works, comprising almost 10
hours of piano music. Admission is £12 per session, or £40 for the
whole festival (four sessions), half price for young people under
16. No tickets will be issued beforehand – just turn up on the day.
The church is large and admission is guaranteed. Free parking is
available in nearby residential streets. There are regular breaks for
refreshments, and tea and supper will be available.
All piano fans, and
all lovers of Chopin, are encouraged to come along to this festival of
fine piano playing. I am grateful to the support of both the Chopin
Society and Liszt Society in helping to advertise this event. I have no
doubt that it will be as successful as our several previous festivals
have been.
JD: What are your aims for the future of your series ?
HM: My
overall aims with my concert-promotion activites are threefold, namely
1) to provide vital performing experience for the best musicians
based in London, particularly at the start of their careers, 2) to
provide concert-goers in Ealing with much pleasure in their locality,
without having to travel into central London, and 3) to raise funds to
preserve St Mary’s, Perivale, in pristine condition for future
generations, and funds to support St Barnabas Church. It is gratifying
to see several of our regular musicians starting to make waves in the
musical world.
As regards pianists, two of the finalists in the Leeds
competition last year – Jayson Gillham and Andrejs Osokins – are regular
performers, as are many other rising or established piano stars, such
as Viv McLean, Ashley Fripp, Mishka Rushdie Momen, Mei Yi Foo, Ivana
Gavric, Rustem Hayroudinoff, Jianing Kong, Meng Yang Pan, Konstantin
Lapshin, Ji Liu, Evelina Puzaite, etc, and many of the best string
players and chamber ensembles based in London have played at both our
venues.
JD: Anything you'd like to add?
HM: Only
that organising 100 concerts a year, with all the fixing, advertising,
publicity and sorting out arrangements, has now become a busy full-time
job, but is an excellent and rewarding way of spending my retirement!
DAVID LE PAGE, born in
Guernsey, is the leader of the Orchestra of the Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon, and
of the Adderbury Ensemble. He trained at the Yehudi Menuhin School and in Bern
with Igor Ozim and Sidney Griller. He was a prizewinner in BBC Young Musician
of the Year and the Yehudi Menuhin Competition. He plays the living daylights
out of this repertoire.
ANTHONY HEWITT won top
prize at the William Kapell International Piano Competition in 1992 and studied
at the Menuhin School, the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and the Franz Liszt
Academy, Budapest. He is artistic director of the Ulverston International Music
Festival, Cumbria.
JESSICA DUCHEN writes
about music for The Independent and is the author of four novels, two
biographies and a number of stage works mingling words and music. Plus JDCMB, of course. 
